If you’re a conservative evangelical Christian who feels called to ministry, you’re welcome to attend Princeton Theological Seminary. But you’re not worthy of honor there. That’s the message sent by PTS’ president, Craig Barnes, today.

In an email to faculty and students, Barnes announced he reversed his decision to honor Pastor Tim Keller with the annual Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Witness. Doing so, Barnes said, might “imply an endorsement” for Keller’s conservative views on women’s ordination and same-sex relationships.

Jesus of Nazareth is explicitly mentioned in fewer than half of the 66 books in the Protestant Bible, Tim Keller sees Jesus in all of them. “There are two ways to read the Bible,” the New York Times best-selling author and prominent pastor of New York City’s Redeemer Presbyterian says. “The one way to read the Bible is that it’s basically about you. … Or you can read it as all about Jesus.” It’s somewhat unsurprising then, given Keller’s perspective, that he would see Jesus throughout the Psalms, an Old Testament book compiled centuries before Christ’s birth.

What is remarkable is how Keller sees Jesus showing up there and why. In “The Songs of Jesus,” Tim Keller and his wife, Kathy, offer a 365-day Jesus-centered devotional from the book of Psalms. Here we discuss what they believe we can learn about Jesus in this ancient book of poetry.

Thirty years ago, most of America’s influential evangelicals resided below the Mason-Dixon line. In recent years, however, the power balance has shifted.

Purpose-driven pastor Rick Warren is situated in sunny Southern California, mega-church minister Bill Hybels has built a Chicagoland empire, and Tim Keller has helped make New York City a growing haven for the faithful. Keller is the New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including “The Reason for God,” and was named one of the most influential religious figures by New York Magazine. He’s become successful by being smart, a phenomenon that makes the oft-dismissed faithful giddy.

But the revered minister has now shifted his focus to a more personal topic: prayer. Tomorrow, he releases a new book, “Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God,” which is already pre-selling strong on Amazon. Here, Keller offers practical advice on the topic and defends his claim that prayer is “the key to everything we need to do and be in life.”

RNS: People in nearly every civilization throughout history have had an instinct for prayer. A recent Pew study found that 17% of non-believers even say they pray regularly. What do you make of this?

TK: Prayer is a response to the knowledge you have of God, and everyone has at least some knowledge of deity, according to Romans 1. Reformer John Calvin taught that, because we are made in the image of God, we all have a divinitatis sensum orsome sense of God’s reality. And Puritan theologian John Owen said that the natural impulse to pray is present in all people.

RNS: Does God hear the prayers of a non-believer, in your opinion? Does God respond to a non-believer’s prayer?

In New York City, everything is always changing all time. From the skyline to the weather to transient residents jumping from neighborhood to neighborhood trying to find the right mix of price, size and location, the city is perpetually in flux.

But the Big Apple is experiencing a surprising kind of change—the religious kind—as more Christian communities and leaders are taking root and flourishing there.

New York City is not known as a particularly religious place. Though Gallup reports an above average population of Catholics and Jews, the state of New York is well below average for Protestants and other non-Catholic Christians.

But according to Barna Research’s survey of more that 3,400 residents in the New York media market, New York City is more spiritually active today than in the late 1990s or even 2001 in the wake of 9/11. Barna reports that church attendance is increasing, the number of “unchurched” residents is decreasing, and the number of “born again” Christians is on the rise, surging from 20% in the late 1990s to 32% today.

According to Barna, born again Christians are “individuals who said they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in the life and who believe they will go to Heaven because they have accepted Christ and been forgiven of their sins.”

Possible explanations for New York’s Christian renaissance are numerous, but the city’s crop of increasingly influential Christian pastors, educators, and thought leaders is partially responsible. Here are at least 16 leaders–in unranked order–who are contributing to the city’s Christian revival: